Strengthening Consumer Brand Relationships through Consumer Engagement: Online Brand Communities in Landscape of Social Media

Abstract

The study advances conceptualization and dimensionality of
consumer engagement and validate antecedents and outcomes in
the context of social media. The data collected from active
members of online brand communities, unveiled that consumers
engage with brands and other consumers with brand communities.
The study conducted exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory
factor analysis and hierarchical regression modelling to validate
construct and test proposed hypotheses. Findings of the study
exhibit that brand satisfaction, brand identification yield
significant relationship with consumer engagement while brand
trust turns out to be insignificant. Furthermore, consumer
engagement significantly mediates the relationship between brand
identification, brand satisfaction and brand loyalty. The study
asserts that parsimonious conceptualization of consumer
engagement consists of three dimensions: cognitive, affective and
behavioral. Contributions of the study are two folds; first, endorse
consumer engagement conceptualization and secondly, answer to
call for empirical testing of Online Brand Community Engagement
Framework.